


Feeling my way through the darkness

by hamiltonneedshugs



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Feelings, Fluff, Friendship, M/M, Magnus is soft and good, Talking, The boys being good friends, and he deserves to be happy ok
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-18
Updated: 2017-09-18
Packaged: 2018-12-31 09:06:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12129138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hamiltonneedshugs/pseuds/hamiltonneedshugs
Summary: Magnus still loves Julia, no question. But now he's worrying he might fancy Avi just a tiny bit, and it's sending him into a bit of a tailspin. Cue advice from his friends. Just fluff really, lots of talking and feelings because I love these soft boys and want them to be happy. (contains spoilers for the finale)





	Feeling my way through the darkness

 

 

 

“Ugh,” Magnus says, smashing his face into the pillows on his bed. Or, well, improvised bed. Their luxurious dormitory was pretty trashed by the Hunger, so the three of them are sleeping higgedly-piggedly in one of the old storerooms, with all the bedrolls and cushions they could find. It’s late, and Magnus is lying on his stomach, unable to sleep. 

 

This seems to produce no response from the other occupant of the room, so Magnus does it again. This time he draws out the “ugh”.

 

Still nothing. Taako is ignoring him. Or quite possibly sleep-meditating, or whatever. It’s weird, the three of them sharing a room again. Well, at the moment Merle is down planetside with Mavis and Mookie (Merle has kids, what the fuck, Magnus is still not over that), but he and Taako have been staying at the Bureau, helping with the cleanup. That is, Magnus has been helping with the cleanup. Taako has been mainly lounging around, boasting loudly about how he saved the world, as if they hadn’t all been there and had a pretty big hand in it as well, but then again, Magnus supposes he deserves the gloating. He’s also been catching up with Lup, which must be pretty difficult and painful as it is. Then again, the cleanup operation is pretty painful, too. Not many Bureau employees died, considering, and no one Magnus knew particularly well, save for Johann, but it’s still awful. There’s still too much suffering here, too many bodies to bury, too many tears and “what ifs”. It reminds him of Raven’s Roost, and the pain every time they had to leave a planet to die during the journey, and it’s really tough, to be honest. 

 

But that’s not actually the reason he’s trying to get Taako’s attention. 

 

“UGHHHHHH,” he says a third time, with an edge of urgency this time, and Taako finally lifts himself up from his nest of pillows and fixes him with an irritated glare.

 

“All right, my dude, I get the message! What the fuck is up with you? Some of us are trying to rest.”

 

“Sorry,” Magnus says, immediately feeling bad. Taako does look tired, and now Magnus thinks about it, he’s also been trying to sort out all the catering for the moon after most of the kitchen/cafeteria was lost to the Hunger. And that must be a bit of an emotional time for him anyway, what with the poisoning thing, even if it wasn’t for the enormous revelations and the trauma of the past week or so, and now Magnus feels like he really shouldn’t be bothering him.

 

“Yes?” Taako says impatiently, and Magnus realises that that was all internal and actually he’s just been sitting there staring like a moron.

 

“Oh. Well.” Now it comes to it, he finds he doesn’t know what to say. “Erm. Nothing.”

 

“Don’t give me that shit,” Taako says. “Tell me now, or you’re going to be feeling Bigby’s Hand up your arse pretty fast.”

 

“Ugh,” Magnus says, a real note of disgust in it that time.

 

“Trust me, neither of us want that. Anyway, spit it out.”

 

“I,” Magnus says eloquently. “I’ve been thinking.”

 

“Heaven forbid,” Taako says, with a dramatic eye roll. “That’s not normally the Magnus style.”

 

“Well, no. And I’m bad at it. I mean, maybe I don’t do it because I’m bad at it, or I’m bad at it because I don’t… Well. Anyway.”

 

Taako heaves an almighty sigh and properly turns to face him. Magnus flushes a bit under his full attention. God, why had he wanted to bring this up? This was a terrible idea. He hadn’t thought it through, like, at all.

 

“There’s. Well. A thing. And I thought I was sure about it, and now I’m not, and it’s kind of fucking with me.” 

 

“O-kaaaaaaay,” Taako says. “I mean, I get that. Like two weeks ago I would’ve sworn blind that I didn't have a sister, and…” He gives an expressive shrug. “Kinda screws you up, I know that.”

 

“Yeah,” Magnus says, dejected. “But also no, because this isn't that kind of thing. Like, well. Memory-losing stuff. I mean…”

 

He pauses, sighs again. Taako, to his credit, actually looks very patient. He's not as bad at this as he pretends to be. He's not judgemental, and while he does lose interest pretty fast most of the time, he manages to stay focused when it's important. That said, Merle is good at the listening thing as well, though he does have a tendency to doze off if the problems aren’t ‘juicy’ enough.

 

“It's about,” Magnus says, and his throat closes up a little at even the thought of saying her name. “Julia.”

 

“Mmhmm,” Taako says gently. They haven't talked about Julia much, but after Refuge they'd all had some pretty frank conversations about what the chalice had offered them. He knows enough.

 

“I was so sure,” Magnus begins, and then his voice cracks. “Ugh. I was so sure that I would never… That she was my only…”

 

Taako says nothing.

 

“I mean, in Wonderland, when they made us play that stupid game, I… I was sure…”

 

“No offence my man, but if you _were_ interested in that creepy mannequin when we were being held captive in that hellhole, I'd think you needed to have your head looked at,” Taako points out.

 

Magnus managed a laugh. “Yeah, I know. But still. I… it seems so stupid, because even then, I was so certain.”

 

Taako nods.

 

“And I… I don't know whether it's….. well, surviving the end of the world (again), or remembering that I'm so, so much older than I realised, or just, finally being able to stop and think about it for a bit… but I don't…. I don't feel like that anymore.”

 

“OK,” Taako says, after a beat of silence. “You know that's OK, right?”

 

“Yeah?” Magnus says, but his voice comes out higher and more questioning than he'd intended. “Yeah, I do but… it seemed… better, before?”

 

“You felt like a better dude when you thought you were never going to fancy anyone after her, right?” Taako says, and Magnus nods.

 

“Yeah, I guess,” Magnus says. “That seemed right, you know? What she deserved. Sounds stupid, I know. But it seemed… more noble? I don't know.”

 

“Yeah I get that,” Taako says. “But. Well. You can't help the way you feel, can you?”

 

“No,” Magnus says. “I kinda wish I could. But I… I mean, it's not like, a, life's too short thing? More, it's like… Life’s too long? Life’s too long to be alone.”

 

Taako nods, stays quiet, and Magnus dabs at his eyes subtly. Taako gives him a good thirty seconds before coughing and saying, “So. Who is it? Because if it's Merle I'm going to have to do us all a favour and just kill you and throw you off the moon fucking pronto, capiche?”

 

Magnus laughs, slightly wryly. “Nah. It's not Merle.”

 

“Thank the gods,” Taako says, with an exaggerated praying gesture and a swoon of relief. “Come on, spill.”

 

Magnus coughs, tries to hide his face a bit. “I mean. It’s nothing, really. Don’t laugh.”

 

“I can make no such promise,” Taako says, very gravely.

 

“Fine, fine.” Magnus hides his face properly and says into his pillow, “Avi.”

 

Taako gives a pleased squawk. “Oh man, you've got taste!”

 

“Thanks?” Magnus says, his voice muffled by the pillow. 

 

“I didn’t know you…. Well. Went for weekends at Goldcliff.”

 

“What?” Magnus asks, bemused, lifting his head up.

 

Taako sighs and makes a very odd, probably obscene hand gesture. “Avi’s a dude!”

 

“Oh! Yeah! I know that!” Magnus says. (Taako mutters “give me strength”). “I just hadn’t heard of that saying. I mean… I don’t think it is a saying? But yeah. No. That’s fine, that doesn’t matter, it’s just the… Well, the thinking about anyone at all, really. But… Wait, why did you guess Merle, if you didn’t think I was…?”

 

“Merle wasn’t a GUESS!” Taako explodes. “He was a nightmare! The worst-case scenario! The second apocalypse! Or, rather, like, the hundred and second apocalypse! Fuck _me_ , he wasn’t a _guess_!”

 

“OK, OK,” Magnus says, through his laughter. He feels a little better already. 

 

“Good choice, though,” Taako says approvingly.

 

“What? Why?”

 

Taako starts listing on his fingers. “One, he’s fit as fuck. Two, he’s human, so no pesky lifespan issues…”

 

“I’m not settling down with him!” Magnus yelps, terrified. “I am _thinking_ about _maybe_ liking him _a little bit_ , that’s it!”

 

Taako gives him a look that makes it clear he doesn’t believe a word of it. “Yeah yeah yeah, whatever. Anyway, three, you’re both weird meatheads who like exercise and shit. And, well, he’s just a nice guy, right? Could be worse.”

 

“Yeah. I guess,” Magnus says, his head back in his hands now. “I know nothing’s going to happen, it’s just… It’s a lot, you know. I mean, there’s a lot of everything right now to cope with, and this…” He shrugs. “I don’t know how to fix this? How to deal with it? I mean, not that it needs fixing? I dunno.”

 

“OK,” Taako says, with a long-suffering sigh. “I knew it. You’re coming here for advice for the best love guru on this planet. Oh wait, on this planar system. Moi.”

 

“No, that was really not it,” Magnus says hastily, and Taako gives him that look that says “bullshit” again.

 

“So. When did you start liking him? I mean.” Taako makes elaborate air-quotes around the word. “Starting to ‘ _think_ ’ about liking him.”

 

Magnus shrugs disconsolately. “I dunno. During the battle? Y’know, with the Hunger?”

 

“Yeah, I happen to remember that one, as a matter of fact,” Taako says, deadpan. “Are you fucking kidding me? The fighter thing is so ingrained in you that you can only have feelings when you’re axing a dude? Shadow being. Whatever.”

 

“No,” Magnus protests, and then thinks about it, thinks about the revelations that have come to him when he’s been training, or fighting, letting his mind go blank of everything but the physical, with the occasional glimpse into something almost profound. “Well. OK. Maybe a bit.”

 

Taako shakes his head in despair. “Gods help us.”

 

“It wasn’t just the battle thing!” Magnus argues. “There was…. Y’know the animal planet?”

 

“Yes,” Taako says, pretending to sound bored. “The Hunger ate it and then spewed it all up back at us?”

 

“Yeah. Well. There was this… wolf.” Magnus swallows. It isn’t like him, to be afraid, but he still feels the pain in his shoulder, the terror at the back of his mind, the knowledge he wasn’t going to get out of this one. “The Power Wolf? But, made of Hunger, obviously. And it got me, and I… I thought it was all over? I thought that was it, and I…”

 

He exhales slowly. “This is… This is gonna be some deep shit,” he says, warningly, and Taako just rolls his eyes and nods at him to go on.

 

“I… I’ve never been afraid to die, right? Because. Well. I know I’m going to be with Julia, so…” Magnus’s voice trails off, and he takes a breath. “But with you guys… I worry about not being able to protect you, to help, if I’m gone? And that was pretty new and terrifying, even before I remembered. Well. The journey. All that shit. But in that moment, when I thought the wolf was going to get me… I just… I wasn’t really worried about the rest of you? I mean, you and Lup are the strongest wizards I’ve ever seen, and Merle… Merle, I don’t know how he manages it, but he’s always OK, you know? I don't know, it wasn’t like I was thinking it through at the time, but… I wasn’t worried about the protecting thing. I was just scared because I thought I was going to die. And I didn’t want to.”

 

“OK,” Taako says, and Magnus is grateful for the reminder that he’s still there, still listening, because it’s hard to focus right now, because his eyes are filling with tears and he's just staring fixedly at his pillow.

 

“And I was thinking… I mean, what with the Hunger in that form, I’d been thinking about the animal planet, and the Power Bear, and I was having these… Kinda flashbacks? And I remembered once he’d told me that the most important thing was to ask for help? And in that moment I… I didn’t think anyone was going to come? But I knew otherwise I was dead, and…”

 

Magnus shrugs. “Avi came,” he says, and his voice is a little hoarse now, because there hasn’t been that much talking this past week - they’ve all been too exhausted. There’s too much to say. And now all this stuff is coming out in a flood, and he can’t stop it. “He came through the window in one of the spheres, and just shoved the wolf off me. And I know it sounds stupid, but just… Someone being there, you know? Someone to watch my back? And I know you guys watch my back, all the time, but you know you’re different, the seven of us are different. But Avi… Avi’s just a normal guy, and…”

 

Magnus shakes his head. “Something about the way he looked?” He realises he’s been telling half this story as though he’s asking Taako an endless series of questions, but he feels like that in a way, though it’s himself that the questions are directed towards. “I can’t… I can’t put my finger on it. But it got me thinking, and. Well. Worrying, I guess.”

 

“For a man who doesn’t do much thinking, you do a lot of it once you get started,” Taako says, soundly frankly impressed, and Magnus gives an apologetic chuckle. “I mean, I don’t want to pull out, like, the biggest cliche in the fucking book, but you know Julia would…”

 

“Would want me to be happy? Yeah, I know,” Magnus says, and he’s tearing up again now.“I think she’d yell at me to stop being so stupid if she saw me now, ha.” He pauses. “But, it’s like… I don’t know how to describe it? Like you and Lup?”

 

Taako quirks an eyebrow. “Not sure what road you’re going down there, Magnus.”

 

“No, no, I don’t mean… Well. The way you love Lup, it’s like… It’s everything, right? More than anything else. You don’t… You don’t question it, it’s just there, you can’t compare it to other things because it’s always going to be bigger, she’s like… Like the other half of you.”

 

“Right,” Taako says. His face is closing off a bit, and Magnus doesn’t think he’s ready to talk about this yet, or maybe just not with him, so he carries on. 

 

“And that’s how I feel about Julia? Obviously, without the…”

 

“The creepy sister thing, yeah,” Taako interjects.

 

“Yeah. I just. She’s always going to be… She’s my wife. Not ‘was’ - ‘is’. She’s everything to me. She’s a part of me that I’m never going to be without. But… Ugh, I’m not doing this in the right order. It’s like you and Kravitz?”

 

“Tread carefully, my man,” Taako says. 

 

“Sorry. I didn’t mean… Anyway. I don’t know how… How you feel about him, at the moment, but it looked like, in the battle, I mean…”

 

“More carefully,” Taako warns.

 

“OK, sorry. But… However you feel about him, it doesn’t change the way you feel for Lup. It doesn’t diminish it, it doesn’t make her any less important. And… I know it makes less sense, with Julia, because obviously that isn’t as simple as platonic love versus romantic love… Not that I love Avi, obviously, I don’t know if I even like him. Well, obviously I like him as a friend, but not. I don’t know, but…”

 

“Please stop talking,” Taako says. “What you mean is - you feel like you can love Julia, just the same, but you can _maybe think about feeling_ _something_ for someone else, and that doesn’t change the Julia thing.”

 

“Yes,” says Magnus, taking a deep breath.

 

“For a meathead you have a fucking lot going on up there, huh?” Taako says.

 

“Not often,” Magnus confesses. “But sometimes. Yeah.”

 

“OK,” Taako says. “Time for your Taako wisdom. You ready? You got your pen and paper?”

 

“No,” Magnus says. “I’ll remember.”

 

“OK,” Taako says. “Stop. Fucking. Worrying. Easier said than done, I know. But, hey, there’s no rush. You just saved the fucking world. Take a breather. Maybe do some thinking, seems you’re quite good at it once you get going. I know the whole ‘Magnus rushes in’ shit is kind of your ‘thing’. But you don’t have to rush into this, y’know? Take it easy. Be nice to yourself, stop beating yourself up.”

 

“Yeah and I know Avi isn’t… I know it isn’t a good idea, I…”

 

“Let me fucking finish,” Taako says. “Don’t worry about Avi. He’s a big boy, he can handle himself. And it’s not like he doesn’t _know_ you’ve got some shit going on.”

 

“But he’s my friend, and I… He probably doesn’t…”

 

“Don’t make me think about what spell I can use to shut you up,” Taako warns. “You will not like it, and I can’t promise it wouldn’t involve tentacles. Anyway. You’re worrying about the little details. Chances are, if you _might_ be attracted to Avi, then you _might_ be attracted to some other people in the fifty whatever years you’ve got left on this godforsaken planet. The boy’s cute, but he’s not _that_ cute. And you’ve got _time_ , now, OK? It feels like we never had enough, but you gotta remember… We’re not going to lose all this in a year. Unless you get wasted again and topple off the edge of the base, like you _nearly_ did at the Solstice. Anyway. You’re also, like, world-famous, and not too hard on the eyes yourself. So don’t panic and put all your eggs in one fucking basket, and decide that because actually it turns out you don’t like Avi as much as you thought you could, or that he doesn’t like you back, that it’s all over, OK? You can have more than one shot at this.”

 

“OK,” Magnus says in a small voice. Taako’s a real good guy, and he’s going to get bear-hugged within an inch of his life in a minute.

 

“ _But_ ,” Taako says, wagging a finger. “For what it’s worth, I think you and Avi would be cute together. Like I say, you’re like twin soft meatheads. Also, I have eyes, and you should have _seen_ the way he looked when you grabbed him and told him how cool you thought he was before we went to Rockport.”

 

“Oh!” Magnus says, pleasantly surprised, and Taako gives a deep sigh. 

 

“Yeah. Well. Anyway. Let’s not get into that. My point is, relax. Or, like, go punch someone, and think during that, if that helps?”

 

“Yeah, it does,” Magnus says. “Thanks, Taako.”

 

Taako gives him a long-suffering glare. “Don’t fucking start.”

 

“No, seriously. You’re a great friend. And I know you’ve got a lot on your plate too, so if you ever want to talk, or…”

 

“How about we just skip the emotional blubbering and just get to the actual physical assault that you call affection,” Taako says, and Magnus takes that as his cue to tackle him into a hug.


End file.
